Hello again! Here’s a quick update on what we have been up to lately — we’re glad you are with us on this journey!

So what is this Ponder thing all about?

While you probably signed up for these updates for some reason, it might not be super clear what this whole Ponder thing is actually all about. The fun part: We don’t know exactly, either – and that is a good thing! The facts: We are a bunch of fairly seasoned humans from the digital product development industry, we’re based in Berlin, Germany, and after quite some years working for clients from big to small we recently found ourselves increasingly unsatisfied with the status quo. So we created Ponder as a place where we try to take a step back from our day-to-day work, think about how this industry actually works and experiment with alternative approaches. That is what Ponder is today – let’s see what it will be tomorrow!

What we have been pondering on

As probably most design-related people, we get this tingly feeling when we get close to tools and materials to actually create something physical with your hands. Those stacks of notebooks in the store ready to be filled? Sheets of Plywood in the hardware store waiting to be built into literally anything? That feeling when you know that there’s no undo button when you make the cut? Quite magical, isn’t it?

While it is out of question that Design is not about the pretty surface and lovely crafted details, we actually do wonder if and how we can bring this tingly feeling of playing and creating something into the digital product world. Because at least in our experience that rarely finds a place between business needs, Jira stories and budget meetings. Maybe it is a matter of how you work, maybe it is a matter of who you work for or maybe it’s completely fine that digital work lacks that feeling – but then you might have to schedule (and budget!) it into your work day.

We haven’t found the perfect setup yet, but we are very sure that taking this creative urge seriously and giving it the room it requires makes us better designers (and more relaxed partners, parents and friends). So we are very much looking for ways to implement this into our future way of working.

Sharing is caring

To wrap up this week’s issue, we would like to share a couple of things that inspired us and might be interesting to you as well. So here we go …

An event that we joined:

Democracy Lab: Breakfast Briefing on »Democratising the Knowledge Economy« Our takeaway? Coming next week!

A book we recommend:

Automating Humanity written by Joe Toscano.

A podcast we enjoyed:

The Bolognese and a Glass of Wine Episode of Bon Appétit’s Foodcast 🍝

Some great stuff we read online this week:

• Emily Cohen‘s Article on how designers often complain about bad clients and design becoming a commodity while they actually fail to even slightly push back against that.
• The discussions between and around design industry thought leaders can be a tad tiring sometimes, but there's some interesting points in the perception of John Maeda’s design in tech report and some of the reactions on twitter.

And finally for something completely different:

To stay within the "create something with your hands" theme: here's two amazing YouTube channels about beautifully crafted wooden furniture:

• ISHITANI
• Kobeomsuk

And that's it! See you next time and feel free to follow us on Instagram or Twitter for in-between updates.

Cheers!